Google Maps Image That Depicts Murder Investigation Removed

Google has certainly done its fair bit to make the world a whole lot smaller, at least in terms of a virtual environment. In fact, we are now able to check out the canals of Venice using Google Street View, but when it comes to Google Maps, there are some images that simply should not be shown. One of them would be an image of an alleged murder investigation, and it is comforting to know that Google had quickly agreed to remove and replace said satellite photo in Google Maps.

The particular image depicts the scene where 14-year-old Kevin Barrera was found shot and dead, located near several railway tracks in Richmond, California, four years ago. In this photo, there were also police officers who happened to be doing their jobs, investigating the gruesome crime scene. The victim’s father, Jose Barrera, stumbled upon this Google Maps photo just last week before he made a request to Google to remove this particular image. Brian McClendon, vice president of Google Maps, said, “Our hearts go out to the family of this young boy. Since the media first contacted us about the image, we’ve been looking at different technical solutions. Google has never accelerated the replacement of updated satellite imagery from our maps before, but given the circumstances we wanted to make an exception in this case.”